GOP frets over Reagan mythmaking

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — On the eve of what would have been his 100th birthday, Ronald Reagan is entering the final stages of a civic canonization that leaves even some of his most fervent admirers uneasy.

The longstanding conservative icon, lampooned in life by the left, is being elevated into the pantheon of American leaders who transcended partisan politics.

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What worries the right about this is that by being sculpted in marble, Reagan may be stripped of the traits that made him so revered among conservatives and despised by liberals. In other words, if the 40th president is all things to all people, he means nothing to anyone.

“To only look at the imagery of Reagan is to see only half the picture of the man because he was a very strong advocate for conservatism,” said Ed Meese, Reagan’s attorney general and the keeper of the conservative flame for his old boss.

Republicans are partly to blame for their predicament. After assessing the honor accorded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., they decided that their own icon should get his due and made a concerted effort to plaster Reagan’s name on schools, streets and even the airport of the capital city he made a career out of running against.

And here in California, where centennial festivities are being held this weekend at his newly renovated presidential library, there is a carefully crafted effort to present Reagan as the man who restored America’s confidence in itself — not as the great evangelist for modern conservatism.

“Let history say of us, ‘These were golden years — when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, when America reached for her best,” Reagan is captured saying in a video montage at the close of the tour as images of the Lincoln Memorial, the Statute of Liberty, little children saying the Pledge of Allegiance and aging veterans marching in a parade are shown on screen.

The library itself and the events commemorating Reagan’s birth were pure Americana — history set to a Lee Greenwood soundtrack. (And the patriotic country crooner himself is scheduled to perform this weekend).

But Democrats are collaborators, too, in the redefinition of Reagan. They’ve effectively given up the fight over defining the most conservative president of modern times. And, in some cases, they’re even embracing what the right argues is a sanitized version of the man. Even before he was elected, then-Sen. Barack Obama caused a stir in his own party by making the case for how consequential the two-term president was in a 2008 campaign trail interview.

“He tapped in to what people were already feeling, which is, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing,” Obama said at the time.

Now the president is taking to USA Today to praise Reagan’s “faith in the American promise,” toting around Lou Cannon’s seminal biography of the Gipper and even appears on the cover of TIME magazine super-imposed next to his conservative predecessor.

And after his sunny State of the Union speech, Obama was hailed for what many called his Reagan-like optimism.

“Reaganism is not a slur anymore,” cracked Rich Lowry, editor of National Review.